Dark Night of the Soul
by krinklysodapop
Summary: There are no doubt dozens of wonderful fanworks about what Waylon Park is thinking about as he attempts to escape Mount Massive, but not like this. This is the be-all-end-all, and if I am wrong then I will not finish it. The story is the same you've heard, however to save the bits that I think may drag, you'll probably note a lot has been cut. Sonnet 71 by Shakespeare.
No longer mourn for me when I am dead

Then you shall hear the surly sullen bell

Give warning to the world that I am fled

From this vile world, with vilest worms to dwell:

Nay, if you read this line, remember not

The hand that writ it; for I love you so

That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot

If thinking on me then should make you woe.

O, if, I say, you look upon this verse

When I perhaps compounded am with clay,

Do not so much as my poor name rehearse.

But let your love even with my life decay,

Lest the wise world should look into your moan

And mock you with me after I am gone.

Sonnet 71

I heard the sounds of the men before I opened my eyes to see them. I could smell the metal floor and glass walls, and the faint buzzing of the screens behind them- or maybe that was just my own ears ringing in my brain. My head was also _throbbing_ , I could feel my pulse rushing through my skin, as though my body was trying to push through my head's confusion. I closed my eyes again.

The distinct, invasive smell of the sanitizing suits filled my nose while the men squished in their rubber boots closer to me. The floor was cold against my cheek. Someone's boot met with my knee, a testing nudge to see if I was coming around, only then did I feel the need to pull my eyes open.

My entire line of sight was blurry: everything one mass with only a couple variations in color- the people wearing the cerulean, sanitized suits stood out the most as I forced myself to focus, yet I trying to see straight may as well have been expecting myself to jump up and start clawing at their faces. I was unaware of my physical self, my body may as well have been left behind in that realm of unawareness, and I was left with only my vision with which to observe what would happen to me.

"Andrew, h-he's awake," a muffled yet close voice observed before sneering, "did you have a good trip, Mr. Park?"

I closed my eyes again, wishing for cover, protection of any kind, against these hostile men. I hoped against hope that I was only in a bad dream and hadn't fully awoken yet, somewhere with my boys, my sons. Way back, as if it had happened many years ago rather than within this same day, I recalled that damn email of mine…the email that put me in this mess.

"Well, I've definitely seen you look better, Park," a voice remarked who I recognized as Dr. Andrew Snider's- a rat of a man I had been working with in my time at the asylum, "help me get him up."

I was lifted soon afterward: one man at my shoulders while another held my legs. My body was sore and still numb to my brain, my sight remained useless while I felt immediately lightheaded as they carried me only a foot away into a hard chair, forcing me upright. I groaned as the nausea sent waves throughout my head that rippled down my spine.

" _Heh_ don't know why I asked for your help, Rick, I've taken shits heavy than him." Snider chuckled as I felt straps tighten around my wrists.

My desire to resist was feeble compared to the ringing in my ears and the pain just behind my eyes- a headache like no other could experience. My head rolled over on the side of the chair and I faced another direction entirely as they continued to tighten restraints down my legs. I was helpless, like a newborn child whose only abilities lie within either consuming nutrients or crying out for it.

"Alright, Waylon Park, I think we get the gist of your desultory." Andrew snapped at me, before rising to his feet and bringing his face so close to mine that he was no longer a blur but his pupils became distinct, his face now a web of wrinkles and gossamer-thin scars, I could feel his foul breath hitting my nose, "open those eyes, Park. You don't have to wake up, but open your eyes."

I bit my thin bottom lip and tried to bring him more into focus, but my head still pulsed and my body remained apart from my brain. My forbearance I knew would piss him off further, but I only wanted to get his odious face away from my own, as I slightly wrinkled my nose and turned away from him.

The quick slap that ensued did indeed force my eyes open, the sting of it brought tears to my face as I looked him again, "what's the matter?" the bastard continued with feigned sympathy, "Did somebody hit you? Here, let me help."

Within my view, the man before me, who was always one to speak down to his inferiors, and offering help only if receiving something in return, now opened his mouth so I could make out his tongue barely hanging out. I almost closed my eyes again to once more hope I could mentally push him away, but the feeling of his face suddenly brushing against my cheek as his slick, serpentine tongue made its way from my jawline to my earlobe made my stomach roll and my senses return at last.

The reality of the situation disgusted me, I wanted to throw up in my chair until they bolted my head to keep me from moving my neck, " _I will fucking kill you_." I struggled through gritted teeth to him, a mere few inches away from my face still.

A sneer spread across his face and I had a sinking feeling in my stomach, until from behind me spoke up, "uh, Andrew, you getting these alerts?"

His expression shifting to annoyance in the blink of an eye, Snider stated, "uh, kinda busy here."

"I-it sounds like r-real trouble though," an increasingly nervous voice kept prompting behind me, meanwhile Snider and I remained fixated onto each other, he had a gleam in his eyes that made me want to kick his head in, except he knew I couldn't nor would I be able to again, "ah, uh, at the Engine, they say that Hope made a lateral ascension."

"Billy Hope?" Asked Snider, suddenly breaking away to stare behind me at the timid voice, the intensity increasing, "and they're not happy about it?"

"No, s-sir."

"Well…shit," Snider said after a brief pause of recollection, "shit, shit, _shit_! Come on, Manera."

They left me to die. Closing the door behind them as the large screen began broadcasting the Rorschach images I'd only seen as single pictures rather than played before me. A man once told me what they were about: each of the depictions was triggering to a certain patient, but they were not the usual ones found in other mental institutions or hospitals, they had been slightly altered in order to subconsciously increase their negativity. Somehow changed to force one to see the images as their worst fears.

This was the film that played before me now. Before I had seen them in a "safe" environment and they had had little influence over me, but now, forced into a room where my head could not turn to look away, it was entirely changed. What I hadn't known before was that the film was part of the trigger- the way one Rorschach picture transitioned into another one allowed for a new one to be created within the overlap. Awful demons were created: fangs, snakes, spiders, beetle pincers, a man losing his teeth, infected surgery wounds, a field of dead men, a woman being hung, a sickly figure in a doorway; all of these depictions of evil and fear.

I heard the screams of others in different rooms while I saw a child with his tongue cut out.

Tears were stinging my eyes again as I saw a man hunched over and trying to put his intestines back into his body.

Who knows how long the film played until outside of it, I began to hear a scratching sound coming from within my own skull. As though glass had somehow gotten past my ear and carved a way inside to my gray matter. _Children wearing masks around a dead body._ How long had that glass been in there? When could it have happened? _A woman with one arm putting a rat to suckle her breast._ It was shrill, like an alarm that won't go off, yet far away in a place that I could not reach. It may have been wedged inside a wrinkle in my brain, waiting for something to dislodge it so it could float freely. _A burned man tearing off his bleeding skin as the creature underneath is revealed._

 _A baby with a full set of teeth._

 _Native Americans being scalped._

 _Men with their skin sagging, waiting in cages as someone prepares a meal._

 _A clown eating a dog._

The scratching increased, it began to shriek so loudly against my skull that I knew it was going to come bursting out of me. Don'tletitdon'tletitdon'tletit, I could _feel it_ in the back of my head, if I could only _reach_ back there I could get it out before it burst my brains all over the floor. _If only if_ _ **only.**_

I don't remember when I started screaming, perhaps immediately, but I realized when I suddenly stopped. The headgear broke free, the restraints on my hands cracked themselves open, I was let go and I didn't know why. At the time I was too deep into my own head from what I had seen to so much as entertain the thought that maybe I was only hallucinating the idea of being let go, but perhaps it was due to the fact that I was so distressed that I could tell what was real and not. This was real.

I fell out of the chair, my face once again making contact with the concrete floor. The movie was still playing, lighting up the room to torture the air I breathed in, but it lost all affect without someone to view it. Or maybe I was still watching, as I closed my eyes I could see the black ink paintings against the stark white background- projecting itself inside of my eyelids.

" _Please_." I begged to no one in particular.

Who knows how long I could have stayed on that floor until I heard someone speaking, "You hear that, _don't you_?"

It was a patient, dressed in brown, plain clothes with his number stamped into the chest. He pressed himself against the glass, as close as he could get to me, and asked once again, "Don't you hear it?!"

"Hear-?" I started, before darkness overcame the room. The dim, flickering light of the movie had gone black as the power shorted itself, and I heard the patient's bloodcurdling screams in the darkness.

My heart beating like a drum in my chest, I pulled myself up and tried to make out anything in the black. As I moved my hands they knocked over a metal, tubular tripod, and as the echo rang against the hard floor I knew there was something at the end of the pole. Reaching desperately, I didn't cease until I felt my hands wrap around the casing of a video camera.


End file.
